The toppling of Saddam - an end to 30 years of brutal rule

It was a slow collapse. The statue of Saddam Hussein, huge and commanding, resisted the crowds tugging on the noose around its neck for two hours. Right arm held steady above their heads, pointing towards the horizon.

At last, metal legs buckled at the knee, forcing Saddam to bow before his people, and the statue snapped in two, revealing a hollow core. It was the end, or one sort of ending. Thirty years of brutality and lies were coming to a close - not decisively, not in full measure, not without deep fears for the future or resentment at this deliverance by a foreign army - but on a day of stunning changes.

Iraqis had begun drifting towards the statue on Firdouz Square, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, in the late afternoon, when the noisy grinding of gears announced the arrival of the American tanks.

This was the real heart of Baghdad - not the conglomeration of security buildings and palaces that were the preserve of the regime on the opposite shore and had been bombed for three weeks by the US military.

The crowds seemed to know what was expected of them. A man went up to one of the marines, whose tanks now controlled the circle and both sides of Sadoon Road, a main artery in east Baghdad, and asked for permission to destroy the statue.

But it was still too heady an idea. "You, you shoot it," the Iraqi pleaded. The marine replied, with no apparent irony for the days of killing that preceded their arrival in Baghdad: "No, no, I cannot shoot. There are too many innocent people around."

So it was left to the Iraqis themselves. A scrawny man tore down the brass plate on the plinth; others set off to find a rope to pull the statue down.

A marine threw the Stars and Stripes on top of Saddam's head, before thinking better of it; within minutes an Iraqi flag was in its place. It was the old flag, without the inscription in Saddam's own handwriting of Allahu Akbar (God is most great) that had been added to the gaps between the stars after the last Gulf war.

The symbols of his legacy were becoming undone. But the process was halting and hesitant, with Iraqis waiting until the last possible moment to assert even the tiniest freedoms. At the Palestine Hotel, where foreign journalists have been stabled, the system functioned right until the very end.

At 9am, as the marines were trundling into the southern
suburbs of Baghdad, the minders from the information ministry who spy on journalists, were lined up for duty at the table in the lobby, dictating where, and where not, it was possible to travel.

Outside, the streets were still and almost monochrome, coated with the thick dust of a persistent sandstorm. The crude sandbag posts for the Iraqi militia men were empty.

For two miles there was no sign of the fighters who had tried to slow the American onslaught on Baghdad, until at last one man came into view beneath a highway overpass, slumped in the dirt, cradling a rocket launcher in his arms.

Further down the road, a desperate exodus was under way from the north-eastern neighbourhoods of Baghdad.

They were entirely male and of fighting age, and they were travelling on foot, carrying bedrolls and belongings. They would not stop to talk. A few more cars came into view - the white pick-up trucks with the red chevrons used by the Iraqi security forces. Yesterday, the drivers were all in civilian clothes, and they had rolled-up mattresses in the back.

The minder who accompanied us pointed to a branch office of Iraqi Airways, which was improbably open, and where employees were waiting for their pay. A hair salon next door was open as well. "You see, everything is normal," he said.

We crossed the river to the western bank of the Tigris, keeping a distance from the enclave around Saddam's Republican Palace, the staging ground for American troops.

Off to the side about 10 fighters, many wearing red keffiyehs, sat on the grass with their guns and rocket launchers. They did not appear to be Iraqis, but from among the
Arab recruits to Saddam's cause who have been killed in such appalling numbers in the war against America. As we approached, an Iraqi handler barked an order, and the men ran into an abandoned house.

We drove on through Mansour, one of the richest residential areas of Baghdad, and were flagged down by yet another minder, who had been trying for hours to hail a taxi and report for duty at the Palestine Hotel.

"Did you listen to the statement from the information minister yesterday?" he said. "He gave a very accurate picture. He said that the Ameri cans had been in west Baghdad and that the Iraqis had driven them out."

A few days ago, the US military disgorged four bunker-busting bombs on one of the side streets, targeting, the Pentagon said, one of the last hideaways of Saddam and his sons. On the main road, shop owners swept up shards of glass, and attempted to prise open metal shutters. The minders were distracted; a chemist motioned to come inside.

"This is the price of freedom, between you and me," he said. "This son of a bitch destroyed us. Ariel Sharon - all the dictators in the world - become angels beside him."

It was not an entirely unexpected confession. The last days of the war had brought increasing moments of candour from Iraqis, trained over the years to suppress all critical thoughts of the regime. The self-repression was infectious. During 11 weeks in Iraq, I rarely referred to Saddam by name even in hotel rooms, which are bugged. He became Puff Daddy.

But as the end grew near, the lies became more intolerable. Acquaintances tugged me
aside and blurted out that their cousins and brothers had been killed by Saddam for various offences. Drivers, who are vetted by the information ministry, reacted with excitement and smiles when the American army made its first foray into southern Baghdad at the weekend. And the minder, never viewed as especially solid by his colleagues at the information ministry, boarded the bus for the ritual tour of the city one morning, describing with great excitement the report on the BBC that Saddam airport had fallen.

"Very optimistic news," he said. Then he remembered.

It was the same yesterday. After unburdening himself of his hatred for Saddam, the chemist begged me not to reveal his name, or his shop's location.

"I wish the coalition forces would come here," he said. "I would guide them to all the Iraqi positions. But if the coalition forces stay longer in Iraq, I think it is going to be a disaster."

They already had arrived. We deposited the minder at the hotel and headed back across the river for Saddam City, that dumping ground for the dispossessed and
secretly disaffected Shias that had become notorious over the years. The tanks had been and gone, and a carnival of looting was under way. Teenagers, laughing recklessly, rolled away swivel chairs from government buildings. At an electrical supply depot, grown men piled whatever they could carry on to forklifts and wheeled out to their homes. An Epson printer lay abandoned in the road.

"Have we got rid of that criminal Saddam?" asked one man, carting off a red space heater and an ancient adding machine. "Until when?"

But it wasn't all celebration. As the looters streamed by a bearded engineer erupted in anger. "This is the freedom that America brings to us," he said. "They destroyed our country. They are thieves. They stole our oil and killed many people. Here are the results."

A battered red Saab drove by with six tractor tyres on the roof and the boot, and two tied down on the bonnet. A teenager turned up with a rifle in each hand, freshly stolen from a shop, twitching convulsively at each trigger. "Bush, Bush," he screamed. "Zain" (very good). Two more youths pushed a
small Suzuki jeep along. There was no sign of police, or the militias from the ruling Ba'ath party, those in khaki uniform who had kept an iron grip for years on Saddam City.

Viewed with suspicion by the regime and dread by its better-off countrymen, Saddam City was in the grip of the very nightmare Iraqis had envisaged for the ending of this war: rioting and lawlessness. Smoke billowed from a government store on the edge of the neighbourhood. Beneath a highway overpass, young men tried to cart away the field guns abandoned by the Iraqi fighters when they fled.

Meanwhile, US marines had moved into the north of Baghdad, taking control of the last bridges across the Tigris. The circle of territory still under the nominal charge of Saddam was shrinking.

Back at the Palestine Hotel, it was not yet immediately apparent that the regime had entered its final day. True, the most senior officials from the information ministry had decamped, either in the dead of night or secretly in the morning. None had said goodbye. But a few journalists still hovered forlornly in the drive way, waiting for their minders. Shots were fired from the nearby education ministry at vehicles marked TV.

In the south of the city, a few bands of fighters were making their last stand. A trail of burned-out cars, one with a corpse at the steering wheel, led to sounds of gunfire from residential neighbourhoods.

A few men stood outside their homes, waving whatever pieces of white cloth came to hand. A column of US tanks was lumbering into view in the distance, but it was too early to think of anything but survival.

A statue of Saddam had been destroyed at the main turn-off, but it had been chopped in half at the waist by an American tank shell, not rebellious Iraqis. Here, and in other pockets of the city, the diehards of the regime were making their last stand. One US marine, asked yesterday what had sustained the ragtag and woefully underarmed groups of fighters for so long, said: "Adrenaline."

By nightfall yesterday, the rush was beginning to wear off. The crackle of gunfire in the distance - met by the boom of American tank shells - tapered off. A few Iraqis, watching the chaotic and emotionally charged scenes at Firdouz Square, and the ritualised toppling of the statue of Saddam, grew silent, and edged away from the crowd.

"Can you believe it?" said one man, holding his four-year-old son close to his side. It was impossible to read the emotions flickering across his face. "People are happy. I am not sure."

He sighed, and nudged his chin in the direction of the American tanks. "Shit, all of these problems because of Saddam. They are going to stay forever, these Americans."